Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/233

 upon—the combustion of sulphur, liquefied sulphurous acid, and the combustion of bisulphide of carbon. The room was closed for twenty-four hours. Tubes containing culture-infusions sowed with different proto-organisms, especially the comma microbe described by Koch, were placed in rooms, together with tubes containing vaccine lymph. After each experiment the tubes were taken to M. Pasteur's laboratory, and there compared with other tubes used as tests. The process of the combustion of sulphur is the simplest and cheapest. To perform this combustion, it is sufficient to set on the floor a sheet-iron plate—a large potsherd on the ground gives a satisfactory result on which is placed a furnace of bricks and mortar, or better, one of those small, nearly square furnaces of fire-clay recommended by M. Pasteur, twenty-five centimetres long and twenty centimetres wide, and having the sides pierced with air-holes. To obtain a complete combustion of the flowers of sulphur, it is necessary to



take care that the whole surface be evenly burned; this may be effected by wetting the sulphur with alcohol and inflaming the alcohol. By this method we can burn completely and absolutely as large a quantity as forty or fifty grammes per cubic metre of flowers of sulphur. With twenty grammes per cubic metre, all of the culture-infusions experimented upon were sterilized, except the one containing the carbuncular (anthrax) bacteria. The activity of the vaccine virus was destroyed. The only probable inconveniences involved in the application of this economical process arise from the danger of fire in case the furnace is badly constructed, and from the liability of the metallic objects that may be present to be tarnished. This may take place